If the race was between just Perry and Romney, 49 percent would back Perry and 37 percent Romney. Fourteen percent are undecided.

Eighty percent of GOP voters surveyed support capital punishment, but only 22 percent believe it’s appropriate to cheer about the executions of convicted murderers, as some members of the audience did during the Reagan Library debate last week.

A third agree that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme, as Perry has called it, while 53 percent disagree.